Rick Van Kooten, dean of the IU College of Arts and Sciences and one of the university’s longest serving academic administrators, is being removed from the position by the campus chancellor.
“I have been asked by the Chancellor to step away from my role as Executive Dean effective August 1,” he wrote in an email Tuesday to college faculty and staff. “This was not a change I sought, and it is not easy to leave work that has been so meaningful to me.”
Later in the day, Van Kooten sent another email to faculty and staff, inviting them to meet with him on Zoom on Thursday afternoon.
Van Kooten served as dean for nearly seven years. Caroline Chick Jarrold, associate dean of natural and mathematical sciences and research, will serve as interim dean.
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Van Kooten said he agreed to serve as a special advisor to the chancellor during the transition, working on collaborations with the school of medicine and IU LAB.
The past few years have been challenging for IU’s largest academic unit. Changes to state law led IU to slash hundreds of degree programs, many of them in the arts and humanities. And new rules about what content must be presented in class have worried professors that they may be penalized for teaching about sensitive topics such as race and sexuality.
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Van Kooten will keep his faculty position as a professor of physics. IU said a search for a permanent dean will begin in the fall.
